


Hemline

by Nobodyhasblindedme



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Character Study, Childhood Memories, Clothing, Gen, Metaphors, ish, take this as you want
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-26
Updated: 2016-01-26
Packaged: 2018-05-16 10:50:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5825638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nobodyhasblindedme/pseuds/Nobodyhasblindedme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One lost it. One sold it. One never let it go. </p>
<p>-</p>
<p> A character study based on the Shinganshina Trio's clothing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hemline

**Author's Note:**

> I came up with this and wrote this at one o'clock this morning. As they say, clothes make a man. And a woman. It's metaphorical I suppose.

The brown jacket had come to him as nothing more then a lucky coincidence. 

His mother had been down to the post station near the pier to pick up something his father had sent, brining Eren along for that day (as when he was left to his own devices trouble rarely was far behind) and Eren noticed on their way home that something else had slipped into Carla Jäger's basket of goods. 

The package was lumpy but soft, the only option possible of what was inside being cloth, and low, when his mother carefully sliced open the parcel after seeing no sender or even address on it, there was the jacket - a deep earthen brown, thick and wooly (and in Eren's later opinion, somewhat scratchy.) As the jacket had been wrapped in an unmarked paper with absolutely no indication as to who it was meant for or who sent it, Carla agreed with Eren on this rare occasion that, as he was probably needing a new one anyway...he'd get to keep it. 

And Eren did keep the jacket. Sometimes it was far too hot for him so wear it, or his mother clothnapped it for washing day - once he'd almost been forced to give it up in exchange for his best friend's welfare (the bullies of that day were soon reminded why messing with Armin the Heratic always came with collateral damage) 

But, for the most part, Eren kept the jacket nearby. 

The night after the long first week of training, the thought of the next day sweetened with a morning of free time with only afternoon drills, Eren crawled into his bunk beside Armin and lowered the kerosine lamp set into the wall at the head of the bed. Curling up, Eren found his arms unusually bare. 

Sitting up and glancing around he realized 

He didn't have his jacket. In fact, he hadn't had his jacket with him for...for a while. 

Laying down, Eren would think back, and try and try and think of the last time he'd taken it off. Truth be told, it had barely been more then a hand's reach away for almost two years. Since...since...well, it was a good bit of clothing, and as a refugee with literally no more to you then the name to your face and the clothes on your back, spending months out in the frigid weather it wa foolish to toss something like that away on a whim. The last place he'd had it...

Maybe it had been the changing rooms at the beginning of that very fateful week. People had been assigned a uniform based on their heights and weights and been asked to change for the Orientation. (And Walls, wasn't THAT an afternoon not easily forgotten...) 

Perhaps he'd just accidentally left it on one of the benches. As Eren stared up at the wooden slats of the bunk above him, listening to the others slowly drift off, he felt himself sort of mentally shrug, and rolled over. After all, it did seem an unspoken rule about the barracks - finder's keepers. 

He'd been growing out of the brown jacket anyway, the shoulders too tight and the sleeves too short. So, really, the little brown jacket left his life as it had come. A quirk of happenstance and luck, good or ill. 

It was only a jacket, after all. 

\--

It was looking to be a hard winter. 

Armin could live with that. 

Really, over the course of his short life, had learned to live with a lot of things. The many hours spent carefully dedicating every world of every tale in his grandfather's books because there was always the sick, nagging possibility of them needing to burn the evidence to ensure their own survival, the taunts the local bullies would throw at him or ink onto his skin with their fists if he didn't run home or to Eren and Mikasa's house from school fast enough. 

The fact the house was always so silent because his grandfather was getting old and his work had him up early every day, so he was usually asleep when Armin got home. 

Armin could live with a lot. The loss of his blue jacket, one of the few things he still had left to truely call his own, was practically nothing. 

The jacket itself was a well made one, albeit a little old, though well taken care of. It had belonged to his father when he was a boy, or so grandfather said. The material wasn't thick but it hung heavy off his boney shoulders, like a curtain or drapery. Not extremely comfortable either - Armin could still feel the slight remnants of stiff starching one usually only found with the upperclass society, especially in a place like Shinganshina. Where exactly his father, a low paid bookkeeper when he wasn't taking part in illegal heretical...stuff, came across a garment like that, Armin never found out. In fact, sometimes he rather detested the jacket for its old-fashioned style, often just giving his tormenters more ammunition against him. 

But, he supposed, in the end the jacket despite sentimentalities or lackthereof, had it's uses. 

Ones he made sure to make the most of. 

He'd held onto the jacket for as long as was realistically possible. The past winter had been honestly terrible (as relative to those where he and his friends had actually had homes and a warm hearth to come home to, that was.) None of them had the means to make it better for themselves by obtaining more cloth of varying sorts for more layers, and grandfather could only do so much - until he could do nothing at all, becuse he simply wasn't...wasn't...

Well, no matter. It was time to act, and make use of what everyone always said was a brilliant mind of his. 

Though, Mikasa might refute these decisions on principle...if she knew about them. 

Armin remembered exactly what he got for that jacket - three Sina Royals and a single copper pence. The gold coins he held in a fist so tight it was probably making his knuckles white inside his pants pocket, slipping throught the crowded streets quickly and with determined purpose, and absolutely refusing eye contact with anyone. That was another sort of final purpose of the jacket, he supposed. Without it, he really looked his pathetic size, and no one who wasn't drunk or bored to violence would think him anything worth noticing. 

That day, Armin ran back to the clapboard appartment block and single room he and his only two friends - more like his family now - rented out with the spoils of his sacrifice. 

The decent sized vial of medicine for Mikasa who'd started to develope what would be a dreadful cough if not caught early on. The shoe repair kit they would all need to get through the coming months, as long hours spent running about the refugee district and working in feilds outside of it wore down their more precious clothing commodities, a stack of thicker woolen blankets, and the written notice from the landlord that the next two month's rent had been paid off with the last Sina Royal. 

Armin had asked for the rat-like landlady to give him the notice of payment. For legal safekeeping. 

The last copper pence, the last bit of the jacket he had left, Armin tucked away into his shoe. Perhaps it could be used as grocery funds or towards a payment of some form or an unforseeable event that required monetary input. Whatever the case, Armin endured the rest of the night's 'tsk'ing and grumbling at his actions from his roommates, and went to bed colder...but pleased. 

The little blue jacket had been very nice...but moreover, it had been very useful. 

\--

 

Mikasa didn't remember much from the first few weeks living in the Jäger household. Except the jacket. 

The days blurred together, one big mess of bright sunlight and the town, and Eren never more then a pace or two away from her. At night is was dark and stifling and just as hazy as the daytime. The other children of the district didn't like her much, that she remembered. She looked weird, her long black hair too straight, voice almost nonexistent, her dark eyes filled with too many memories of things these simple bullies would hopefully never experience in their worst dreams. Eren usually told the lot of them to sod off, if he didn't outright try and chase them away. For the most part, Mikasa herself couldn't find it within her to rise to anything they said about her appearance.

Enough violence had been wrought because of that very thing anyway. 

A couple weeks in, Carla unexpectedly pulled her aside, and insisted they spend the afternoon together. Eren was sent to assist his father with a patient while they two go out for some 'time with just us girls.' Taking Mikasa out, the woman mostly ran her errands while just making one-sided conversation with her, never expecting her to add anything, but keeping a steady stream of words coming anyhow. Mikasa appreciated it. The conversation gave her something to listen to through the daze around her. Eventually, they made one last stop before they were to head home. 

The seamstress's shop had been dark and cramped and hot, mostly devoid of other customers this late in the afternoon, but the old woman a behind the counter engaged Mrs. Jager anyway, while, curiously, the mother sent the girl off to see if she could find any fabrics she liked. Somewhat taken aback with the seemingly random request, Mikasa strolled through the shop, hands smoothing over the giant rolls of material, so many different textures and designs.

She came upon a simple one, and when Carla noticed her hand resting on the yardage longer then the others, she ordered a few lengths of it, and within a day, Mikasa was sporting her very own new jacket. It was a rosy pink, and soft cotton, made to be a few sizes too big so she could grow into it. Carla was always thoughtful that way. 

The recruits in the barracks were given a small chest to keep their personal items in, tucked away under the bunks. They didn't come with locks, but just like the unspoken rule with items left lying around, absolutely NO ONE was allowed into another's personal chest without explicit permission - even officers were prohibited from more then routine inspections every two months. Many of the trainees used these to hold mundane items - journals, letters from friends and family, spending money (a secret stash of meal supplements, in some certain walking stomachs.) 

Mikasa's chest was, as most would suspect, surprisingly empty. A purse of coins, and some spare shirts and skirts. Among the loose items, was the last thing anyone who now knew Mikasa Ackerman would expect. 

The little pink jacket, folded neatly and well kept, brass buttons all shined keenly. Should she remove the covering, it would still fit her - Carla had made quite certain it would - but she never did. Mikasa didn't think she could bear it if she lost even one button, tore one thread. Stood in the sunlight too long and caused the subtle colors to fade. 

So she kept it, tucked away and saved. Sometimes, during the darker nights, she would open the chest quietly, and hold it in there hands...and think. Clutch it and the scarf Eren had given her, and just...just think. 

If she concentrated hard enough, she could still catch the faint scent of honeysuckle from the bush that had grown outside the seamstress's shop, the sweet scent so strong in the summer heat of that day out with Carla. 

Honeysuckle and blood. 

Mikasa kept her old jacket.


End file.
